Wines from Weathervane Winery
December 30, 2008Over the holidays my sister and her husband traveled up from North Carolina to spend time with the family. They brought a couple of wines from one of their favorite wineries to share. Weathervane Winery is located in Welcome, North Carolina and produces a range of wines from dry to sweet. We sampled three: Evening Breeze White Wine, Rooster Red, and Blushing Santa.
Evening Breeze is labeled generically as white wine but the winery website describes it as a crisp Riesling with 12% alcohol by volume. It has a clean nose but is closed - it was difficult to really get the aromas to come up out of the glass. It had lemon and other citrus ntoes. The taste was of apple and citrus. It had good acidity and some residual sugar, but the sugar was low. The wine, alone, was too sweet for my personal preference as I like dry wines, but paired perfectly with our dinner. The dish was a combination of shrimp, prosciutto, and potatoes that had been seasoned with cayanne pepper. The slight sugar in the wine balanced well with the spicyness of the food and they made for a delicious combination.
The Rooster Red is described as a Chianti style wine with a hint of cranberries. Right away on the nose you can smell the cranberry. In fact, it's all you can taste as well. This wine tastes nothing of wine but of cranberry juice. With only 7% alcohol by volume it is much more reminscent of juice than an alcoholic beverage. This is also true of the Blushing Santa. This wine is not described on their website as it is a special holiday wine for wine club members only. Blushing Santa smells and tastes of cranberry fruit punch. Somehow they managed to capture the aroma and taste of ginger ale without the carbonated beverage actually being added in. Both of these wines are very basic, slightly sweet, and one dimensional. I can see how they could appeal to beginning wine drinkers as they are easy to drink, but for true wine lovers they are more juice-like than anything else.
I would be very interested to try some of Weatervane's dry wines. It is a new winery that shows some promise in a state with an up and coming wine industry. If ever in the Welcome area give them a try.
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